


ice in our veins, love in our still hearts

by Cinnamonbookworm



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Drabble, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, SCREW IT SHE'S NOT DYING THEY'RE MAKING OUT ON LILAC SHEETS INSTEAD, i had a dream about this happening on the show it was glorious, let laurel and felicity be together 2k16, mentions of lauriver, mentions of lauryssa, mentions of merlance, mentions of olicity, more poetic angsty bullshit from yours truly, post 4x15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 16:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6123043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Cinnamonbookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity's not very good at sleeping, Laurel's guest room has lilac sheets, and they're both broken in similar ways as well. </p><p>Or: I had a dream and decided to write post 4x15 fic where laurel and felicity ACTUALLY GET TO TALK TO EACH OTHER and also get to kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ice in our veins, love in our still hearts

**Author's Note:**

> i had a dream about this last night. then the "who's in the grave?" shit went down and i cried a lot about the thought of losing laurel lance. then i wrote this.  
> title is from the song "marceline" by willow smith because i think bubbline and laulicity parallel each other a lot and also it's just a fantastic song.  
> when will guggenheim let laurel and felicity have scenes together again and let me live?

Felicity’s not good at sleeping.

Laurel learns this about four hours into her crashing at the apartment. It’s probably a side effect from Team Arrow. Half-PTSD, half an outrageous daily coffee intake. Maybe Felicity just finds it hard to sleep alone after months of sleeping with Oliver.

Laurel wishes she didn’t remember how that felt.

She doesn’t wake up screaming, but she does wake up. And when she wakes up, she calls out Laurel’s name.

When she’d rushed in there she’d found not a burglar like she’d expected but just her friend, curled up in the lilac sheets looking almost sheepish. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

Another thing they have in common.

The guest room has lilac sheets on it. Thea’s sheets used to be here, but then she moved in with Alex, and now it’s just Laurel alone in the apartment again. Or at least, she was. 

Felicity had approached her in the cave with a rambled complaint about creaky hotel beds and waking up alone. In so few words, Felicity had asked her if she could stay with Laurel. So now the sheets are lilac.

They’re a gorgeous, soft color and they remind Laurel of her a little bit. Felicity’s all soft light with hard edges. 

Laurel comes back with tea. She hands it over to Felicity in something reminiscent of that post-Vertigo low in the Foundry. Back when Felicity had believed in her, despite no one else doing the same. 

Everything had seemed so cold. 

“How’re you doing?” Laurel asks, if only because there’s nothing else to say.

Felicity manages a smile. She doesn’t have to, but she does. There’s a warmth spreading in Laurel’s gut. “Service here’s a lot better that’s for sure.”

It’s a frail attempt at a joke but Laurel gives a small grin in response anyways in the hopes that it might help.“You shouldn’t have to be alone.”

Loneliness isn’t just Felicity sitting in a hotel room alone for the first time in months. It’s Laurel waiting in what should be home but isn’t because everyone who’s ever made it feel that way is gone now. It’s not telling anyone because she needs to be strong to be a hero and strength is toughing it alone.

It’s not like anyone cares anyway.

“Huh. I don’t think anyone’s ever told me that before.”

“I’ve learned it over the past few years,” Laurel says. 

Loneliness is a pernicious disease. In that way, it reminds her of Oliver. Probably since he’s responsible for at least a part of hers.

And now, he’s left that gnawing feeling with Felicity as well.

Felicity takes a careful sip of the tea. Laurel notes the black around her eyes. Like Felicity didn’t take off her make up completely. Maybe she’d felt like she didn’t have to because she’d been crying. Laurel hates to think that Felicity had been crying for minutes, maybe hours, before she’d decided to reach out. There’s only one person who should feel that alone in this house, and that’s her. 

They’re silent for a few moments, and Laurel neither leaves nor speaks, content to sit on the lilac sheets. And then Felicity begins to talk, weaving speeches with her voice the way she always does. She’s always a surprise to Laurel, either stumbling over her words with all the awkwardness of a giraffe walking for the first time - a ten year old Sara Lance trying on her mother’s high heels - or speaking from the heart with the kind of pure intention that made Laurel get into law in the first place.

At first she was a reminder that there were still good people in the world. Now she’s a reminder that Laurel’s not alone in what she’s feeling. They’re kindred spirits who’ve somehow found each other. Somehow she’s in her guest room with watery eyes and a puffy face and a voice that is almost torture to listen to because she knows exactly how that feels and exactly how much it  _ hurts. _

“I thought he was it, you know. I thought this time I hadn’t done that thing I do where I drive everyone I love away and I thought maybe this time I could finally let go. And I did and now look at me, I mean. I’m a mess, I’m probably staining your sheets… and not the good kind of staining your sheets but the kind that leaves a mess because I’m a mess and-”

“Felicity,  _ breathe. _ ”

She’s a light. She’s a whirlwind. She’s a force of nature that almost cannot be contained who loves with all her heart and sometimes she forgets to breathe. She’s all the emotion Laurel feels but never says. 

Felicity closes her eyes and takes a few breaths. Water slides off her closed lashes and splashes into the cup of tea. The ripples are quiet and small and Laurel is expecting Felicity’s voice to be as well when she continues, but it’s not. A little slower maybe, but only as quiet as it was before.

“I just… feel like I did before this all started. I feel like the person I was before all of this and I thought I’d moved past her, but I just can’t see any other way to not feel this way.”

Laurel takes that in, in the way she takes in oxygen while running after a Ghost, trying and trying to get enough to satisfy herself and yet always needing more. She needs the knowledge that Felicity and her are one and the same, that she’s not alone in the universe and yet…

“Feel what way?”

It’s not that she actually needs to ask; she knows, she thinks she’s always known, but this is the way the game is played. Because whatever glass boundary sits in the air between them is only as thick as fog and she just needs to be able to see clearly before she can act.

Felicity doesn’t even need to answer. Because they both know. It’s the same feeling that makes Laurel put on the mask and stand with crossed arms and not let anyone on the team know her real feelings about Oliver’s son - which she can still barely think about without choking on the idea, the very being of it invading her memories and coloring them dark with that slow type of magic she thought only existed in fantasy. It’s the same feeling that turns tears into a smile in the cold as the lights all around her have never looked duller. 

“Like it’s just me against the world again. All alone because nobody loves me and nobody  _ wants me _ and I know that it’s just all in my head - obviously - because I’m sitting here with you so it’s not like i’m  _ really _ alone but…” Felicity’s not a generally  _ quiet _ person but her voice reaches this octave only slightly louder than the beating of a butterfly’s wings and she sounds so incredibly  _ young _ , “I am.”

This could be like last year, like the last time Felicity had to leave Oliver behind and she came to Laurel and there were tears on wool coats and that gasping for breath that has nothing to do with needing air but needing  _ someone _ . It could be but it won’t be.

There’s a difference in the way Laurel goes in closer this time, sliding along the lilac sheets to where Felicity sits. There’s a different kind of air she breathes when she takes a gulp of the glassy gas, the heated fog that lingers in the February oxygen. If you asked her, she wouldn’t be able to explain it.

Felicity’s hair is straight and it hasn’t been straight in so long, always with some sort of bounce in it since she cut it, but now it looks almost as defeated as she does. Laurel’s right hand moves slowly out to adjust a curl, almost unconsciously, almost in the same way she adjusts Sara’s hair sometimes except not really because this is  _ different. _

“I know you’re hurting.” It’s easy to rationalize this, to push it down and away and do what she’s been doing for so many months now. It’s easy to play the role she’s supposed to play here except everything’s been turned around and this apartment has seen so much loss. Felicity has seen so much loss. “But you’re not alone.”

She wants to say more, wants to repeat the sentiment until she’s blue in the face and the ferocity of that thought scares her to a point that’s almost breaking. 

The rain outside the window is a soft background for all of Laurel’s attempts to calm her heartbeat. It’s racing out of anger - anger that she has to watch anyone feel the way she’s felt for almost a year. It’s racing with that quick shakiness of trying not to cry. It’s racing with that bullet-train speed of something that almost maybe might be love.

She can’t tell.

It’s been so long since she felt anything close to that.

Can a person be a safe haven? 

“I’m just… I should be used to people letting me down by now, shouldn’t I? Don’t people usually learn from these things?” Felicity shakes her head like she’s trying to quickly wipe the thought away. Except it stays. She can tell it stays because that bitter smile Felicity’s always hiding creeps onto her face and stays there. “I thought I’d learned from these things.”

“If anyone should’ve learned by now, it’s me.”

Felicity looks up then, eyes glittering with tears in a way that only sounds beautiful but actually isn’t. Sometimes each of them forget just how similar they are. “What am I doing? I didn’t even think-  _ Of course _ you’re hurting from this too I’m so sorry I just-”

“Felicity…you don’t have to put aside your emotions just for me.”

“You don’t have to either. There are people who love you and-”

Laurel’s laugh is the same flavor as Felicity’s smile. “No one’s really loved me in a long time, Felicity.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“Say nobody loves you.”

“Well it’s true, isn’t it?”

Felicity’s silence would be an answer in itself, except it’s followed up by a real answer, one quiet enough for Laurel to almost miss it but still an answer.

“I’m not nobody.”

The meaning behind the statement takes almost too long to decipher. It’s hidden behind layers of self-doubt on both of their parts. Out of context, it would seem to be just a last attempt at Felicity trying to convince herself that she’s worth something even after all of this but…

Kissing Felicity is not like kissing Oliver, where it’s almost as if you can feel an exchange of souls and breath between the two of them yet filled with that itch in the back of her mind that it was all giving and no receiving. Kissing Felicity is not like kissing Tommy, where her insides are set on fire and it almost burns to swallow it because she’s not used to feeling this intensely. Kissing Felicity is not like kissing Nyssa, mostly adrenaline and half cold with that ever-present ghost of Sara between them.

Kissing Felicity is soft and slow. Kissing Felicity is tongues languidly gliding into each other’s mouths. Kissing Felicity is soft friction on blonde hair. If Laurel was a romantic person, she would say that everything looks rose-tinted when she’s kissing Felicity. Laurel’s not a romantic person. She’ll swear it in a court of law. She hasn’t been a romantic person since her would-be-soulmate and sister died sleeping together.

Felicity’s breath is hot and her tears are wet on Laurel’s cheeks. She smells like roses.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this i'd recommend checking out this video which this was heavily inspired off of:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beSE8Lzc2F8


End file.
